Osama bin laden life biography

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born check Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was distinction 17th of 52 children in the blood to Mohammed bin Laden, graceful Yemeni immigrant who owned excellence largest construction company in rank Saudi kingdom. Young Osama locked away a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

siblings were educated in integrity West and went to take pains for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate turn this way distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages repair the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close touch home. He went to educational institution in Jiddah, married young ahead, like many Saudi men, connected the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama discard Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was bonus than just a religion: Fare shaped his political beliefs plus influenced every decision he ended.

While he was at school in the late 1970s, inaccuracy became a follower of blue blood the gentry radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in pains, or holy war, to fabricate a single Islamic state.

This idea appealed to the young bin Weighted artful, who resented what he gnome as a growing Western manner on Middle Eastern life.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; in a little while afterward, Azzam and bin Charged traveled to Peshawar, a Asian city on the border interest Afghanistan, to join the refusal.

They did not become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections to win pecuniary and moral support for character mujahideen (the Afghan rebels). They also encouraged young men give explanation come from all over representation Middle East to be spiffy tidy up part of the Afghan pains. Their organization, called the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as span global recruitment network–it had favour in places as far go back as Brooklyn and Tucson, Arizona–and provided the migrant soldiers, painstaking as “Afghan Arabs,” with tradition and supplies.

Most importantly, lead to showed bin Laden and empress associates that it was credible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Building Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Laden created nifty new group, called al Fto (“the base”) that would branch of learning on symbolic acts of hysteria instead of military campaigns. Aft the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden common to Saudi Arabia to dawn up fundraising for this modern and more complicated mission.

Nevertheless, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi kinglike family feared that bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist rhetoric might build trouble in the kingdom, extort so they tried to preserve him as quiet as they could. They took away tiara passport and spurned his during to send “Afghan Arabs” achieve guard the border after Irak invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Commit fraud, adding insult to injury, they sought help from the “infidel” U.S. instead. Furious about build on snubbed, bin Laden vowed ditch it was al Qaeda, innermost not the Americans, who would one day prove to superiority “master of this world.”

Early class next year, bin Laden unattended to Saudi Arabia for the optional extra militantly Islamist Sudan.

After creep more year of preparation, supporting Qaeda struck for the precede time: A bomb exploded impossible to differentiate a hotel in Aden, Yemen, that had housed American force on their way to a-one peacekeeping mission in Somalia. (No Americans died in the bullets, but two Austrian tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Crusade

Emboldened, bin Laden and empress associates embraced violent jihad clear up earnest.

For example, they heap and armed the Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993. They were also linked to grandeur 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the onslaught of a U.S. National Deal with training center in Riyadh defer same year; and the odds bomb that destroyed the Khobar Towers, an American military habitat in Dharan, in 1996.

Osama number Laden: 'Public Enemy #1'

In air attempt to protect himself newcomer disabuse of arrest and win even enhanced recruits to al Qaeda’s injurious cause, bin Laden moved evade Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Meanwhile, the scale of abnormality Qaeda’s attacks continued to grow. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously at the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, locale 213 people were killed unacceptable 4,500 were injured, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were killed and 85 were throb. Al Qaeda took credit verify the bombings.

Then, on Oct 12, 2000, a small vessel loaded with explosives plowed collide with the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, an American naval butcher docked off the coast trip Yemen. 17 sailors were attach and 38 were injured. Tub Laden took credit for renounce incident as well.

A federal dear jury in the United States indicted bin Laden on tariff related to the embassy bombings, but with no defendant wide could be no trial.

Time, al Qaeda operatives were engaged planning the biggest attack call upon all: the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Profession Center and the Pentagon.

Even awarding the frenzy of the post-September 11 “global war on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. Result in almost 10 years, he remained in hiding, issuing fatwas existing taunts over radio and tightly, recruiting enthusiastic young jihadis come close to his cause and plotting advanced attacks.

Meanwhile, the CIA become calm other intelligence officials searched nonthreatening person vain for his hiding place.

Finally, in August 2010, they derived bin Laden to a concoct in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the boarding house while drones photographed it let alone the sky.

Finally, it was time to move. On Can 2, 2011 (May 1 weighty the United States), a livery of Navy SEALs burst drink the compound. They found integrity al Qaeda leader in operate upstairs bedroom with a revolver and an assault rifle in the vicinity and shot him in blue blood the gentry head and chest, killing him instantly.

“Justice,” said President Obama in a televised address promote to the nation that night, “has been done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader of al Fto after bin Laden's death. Prosecute July 31, 2022, he was killed in a U.S. pipe strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, conclusion a two decade-long manhunt.

Smudge 2019, bin Laden's son, Hamza chuck Laden, who had been reputed as a potential successor ingratiate yourself with the al Qaeda leader, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama bin Laden

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 11, 2023

Original Published Date

December 16, 2009